Saturday, August 27, 2011

So if you noticed in my last blog post I mentioned that I had ordered an Intelligender test! I know they are not 100% accurate, so I mostly did it for the fun of it. Their website says that it is roughly 90% accurate in most people who test, and from the amount of people that I have seen do them that is right on.

If you aren't familiar with IntelliGender, it is an early gender prediction test that can be taken as soon as 10 weeks. It bases the boy or girl result on how your first morning urine reacts with the chemicals in the test and gives you a clear boy or girl result. If the sample turns orange it is a GIRL, and if it turns green it is a BOY! Side note/tip, if you are going to do an IntelliGender test order it from Amazon.com for HALF the price of buying it in the store! That is what I did, and I am all for saving money.

So, I took my this morning and here is what the result ended up being!!! :)

Yup, I would say that is a clear BOY result!!!! YAY! We both really would love to have a little boy first and my gut feeling so far has been boy, so this definitely made me smile this morning. Like I said before, I understand it is not as accurate as an ultrasound, and I am not going to paint the nursery or tell people we are having a boy. But it is definitely fun to have this line up with what my gut feeling says, and so we will on October 7th if it ends up being right or not!

...I hope it is right! :)

{{I did film a little video of this for my YouTube channel, click HERE if you want to check it out!!!}}

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Hello second trimester!!!!!!!!! I cannot believe that I am THIRTEEN weeks pregnant!!! How crazy is that?! I am so excited to finally be in the second trimester. I feel like there is so much to look forward to over the upcoming weeks. Finding out the baby's gender, getting to feel the baby move, and finally having a real BUMP!

So, let's recap week 12!

Symptoms: I have been having headaches on and off, and they are anything but fun. Thankfully I don't get too many at work because that would make me cry. They are very strong and nothing seems to make them go away except for napping. I haven't been feeling as tired as I did the previous weeks, but I still am tired later in the day. I am happy to be getting some of my energy back and I hope that will continue on for the next few weeks. Other than that, the only constant annoying symptom is breakouts! YUCK! I feel like a super awkward teenager sometimes, but it comes with the territory and I happy to deal with just that one annoyance instead of many of the other ones that other people have. :)

Bumpdate: I feel the bump a'coming! LOL!! I haven't bought any maternity pants or clothes yet because most of my clothes still fit since I lost a lot of weight before getting pregnant. However, my smaller sized stuff is starting to get a little tight. I was putting on a skirt this morning and noticed that the belly wasn't fitting quite like it did last week. I honestly can't wait to have a real bump and not look awkward fat instead! LOL! :)

Cravings: I still am not having super strong cravings for food. I have things that sound good from time to time, but for the most part everything is okay with me. One thing I have noticed this week is that I am SUPER thirsty and cannot seem to get enough to drink.

What I'm looking forward to: FRIDAY!!! We get to see the Dr again and Scott will get to hear the baby's heartbeat! YAY! I cannot wait to hear it again and have him hear it for the first time. Also, I cannot wait to find out the baby's gender and start to feel them move around in there. SO exciting!

Best moment this week: Getting my Intelligender test in the mail! I cannot wait to see what it says, and yes I know it's not totally accurate but it IS fun!

Monday, August 22, 2011

Every day as I spend time praying over this baby, and learning more about how they are growing and developing I am constantly amazed at what an awesome miracle pregnancy truly is. I have always know what a marvelous and creative God I serve, but nothing truly opens your eyes to how great He really is like learning about how your baby is growing and developing.

Every little amazing detail about this tiny little thing inside me is being planned out and perfected by God. How amazing is that?! This morning this truly popped out to me as I meditated on this verse:

Psalm 139:13-14 (NLT)

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

I am so amazed to think that my Heavenly Father is forming and fashioning this little one with His hands each and every day. Every detail of them is being knit together by Him. WOW! There is nothing cooler to know than that. God is watching over this baby and crafting them to be the perfect little individual that He planned for them to be since before the foundations of the earth. What an awesome God!

It makes me so excited to think about everything that God has in store for this little one’s life. I cannot wait for all their wonderful character and personality to be revealed as we get to parent this baby, and watch first hand the work of God’s creative hand unfold in their life. I am already so blessed by this little one and they are barely the size of a plum!

I cannot wait to continue to learn new things about the nature of God as we continue on in this pregnancy and begin our new life as parents. So many people say that you truly have a new understanding of the depth of the love of God when you have your own child, and I completely believe that. I know that God will continue to reveal Himself in new ways to Scott and I as we prepare ourselves for this precious one’s arrival. I have already began to see and know so many different aspects of God’s amazing love since finding out that we were pregnant, and I know each day that passes it will only continue to grow.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

12 weeks!! I can hardly believe it! It’s so crazy to think that I am already THREE months pregnant and in just SIX very short months this little one will be making their big debut. Don’t say that to Scott though, you might have to give him a paper bag when he hyperventilates! LOL!! JK! We are obviously both very excited but it is slightly overwhelming to think that we have so much to do and figure out in such a short time!

So, let's recap week 11!

Symptoms: I am very happy to report that I am still feeling really good! I am definitely still on the tired side but even that is getting a little better. Over the past week, I have been dealing with a lot more headaches which aren’t very fun, but napping seems to help. And hey, I will take any and every excuse to nap!! The only other thing that was different about week 11 was I had a few outbursts over being a little too over emotional and sensitive. Whether it be watching TV or looking at pictures, the stupidest and not sad things would bring tears to my eyes. Even I had to admit to myself how silly that was! Honestly it was ridiculous! Thankfully it was just in mini bursts

Bumpdate: The bump is starting to pop just a little bit. I kind of feel like it is in the awkward I look like I have been eating too much versus a pregnant belly. Haha! Unfortunately, that’s a part of the deal during the next couple weeks. I actually am really looking forward to have a real bump and it being obvious that there is a baby in there!

Cravings: I still don’t have one thing that I can’t get enough of, but this week everything sweet is sounding extra nummy and yummy to me! The other thing that I can’t get enough of is some fresh garden tomatoes that I stole from my in-law’s house. Ok, I didn’t really steal them, but I did ask for a big bag of them when we stopped by the other day. Honestly it’s like the best thing ever!

What I'm looking forward to: I can’t wait for our next Dr’s appointment to check on baby and hear the heartbeat again. Obviously I am so anxious to find out baby’s gender, I just can’t wait to know what it is!

Best moment this week: Getting baby’s stroller and a few other cute baby items! This kid is going to be so blessed with everything it needs!!!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

I am so very excited to be at 11 weeks pregnant!!! I love being in the double digits, feels like we are making some big progress finally!! Baby is now the size of a fig and basically fully formed. It's so exciting to think that this little one is starting to actually look like a little baby! I cannot wait until our next ultrasound so we can see this little baby up close and personal.

So, let's recap week 10!

Symptoms: Everything has pretty much been the same as the previous weeks. I have been super tired and love anytime that I can squeeze in a nap! Over the past few days I have been feeling extra hungry and feel like I constantly need to be snacking. Unfortunately still have the lovely side affect of breakouts, but it's getting better than the previous week. Overall, baby and I are both feeling great!!

Bumpdate: I don't have much of a baby bump yet. I can feel my stomach tightening in the lower abdomen and it's definitely feeling like it's starting to push out a bit more. I am not even sure if that makes sense to anyone but me, but I am thinking in the next few weeks the bump should start to pop out.

Cravings: I don't really have one thing that I sit and crave constantly, but I have moments throughout the day where I have a thought and really want to eat something. Most random from the last week, Funions!! LOL!! And even more random is that fact that it was at 8 am in the morning!

What I'm looking forward to: Finding out the baby's gender and getting to see the baby! Also, our next Dr's appointment since Scott will get to come and hear the heartbeat for the first time!

Monday, August 8, 2011

Before I was pregnant, I was always a little bit nervous about what pregnancy would be like. What symptoms would I have? Would I be one of those people who were so miserable all throughout their first trimester? How would pregnancy treat me? Well, I figured since I have kept this baby news secret for the first 9 weeks that I would do a little recapping of how things have been going so far! Inquiring minds wanna know, right?!

So here we go…..

Week 4: When I saw that positive pregnancy test, I seriously couldn’t believe that it could be true because I felt anything but pregnant. Sure I had a few things that seemed a bit abnormal, but overall nothing had really changed too much for me. I pretty much felt like everything was the same as always. There were a few things that tipped me off that made me think I might be pregnant. I had some minor stomach cramps, which never ever happens, and then also my chest was a little bit swollen and sensitive. (Sorry if that’s TMI!!) The biggest surprise of week 4 wasn’t that I was feeling any certain way, but rather the fact that I was actually pregnant!!

Week 5: Pregnancy so far had been treating me great! I still had the same chest soreness, and mild tugging/pulling cramps, but beyond that everything was pretty much normal. Well, except for having to pee like every 5 minutes! Oh what a perk that is! That definitely wasn’t normal, but totally comes with the territory!

At 5 weeks I had my first Dr’s appointment and had a regular blast filling what seemed like endless vials of blood for testing. Who knew pregnancy would have such great perks? LOL! My Dr scheduled me for my first ultrasound to find out exactly how far along we were, since I have such abnormal cycles. It was torture knowing we had to wait 2 weeks from then to see our little baby!

As far as food went, nothing really made me sick and there wasn’t really anything I craved. I did have my first food aversion though, and it was definitely a strange one for me. The husband was eating some Chinese food and the smell of it was so unappealing I had to cover my nose while he ate it. Hysterical considering I am Chinese and ADORE Chinese food with a passion! Needless to say, I haven’t had any since being pregnant.

Week 6: Morning sickness? Not this girl!!! Now I realize that some of you may hate me for this, and may even stop reading at this point out of shear anger. I am sorry, but it just didn’t happen for me!! I seriously feel for those of you who have to go through that, but it just didn’t happen for me…thank God!! The only times I ever felt slightly nauseated is in the middle of the night when my stomach is completely empty, or any other time when I have a completely empty stomach. However, once I chow down it just goes away. I find myself constantly munching and having to keep crackers on my night stand for a quick snack at 2 in the morning.

Another weird pregnancy thing I noticed going on was having a lot of saliva! Whoever would have thought that was pregnancy related? Not me!! I was totally grossed out by that and find the only solution was to have gum or some kind of candy to make it go away. I almost feel like at times I was going to drool or something!

Week 7: The biggest highlight of week 7 was getting our ultrasound!! We had to wait until Friday for it and it was seriously the LONGEST week of my life. I just wanted to see that little baby of ours! Once we got to the Dr’s office I was shaking because I was so nervous and excited about the whole thing. I always thought I would be the type to cry when first seeing my baby on an ultrasound, considering I cry at nearly everything but the minute that I saw that little peanut I couldn’t stop smiling. It was totally amazing to see our little baby with it's heart beating!! For me, in that moment I feel so in love with this tiny little baby that I saw on the screen. I knew without a doubt that I could never love anyone else more than I do this baby.

Week 8: Is it just me, or does anyone else need a nap? :) Yup, that's pretty much the hourly sentence I would repeat. I could seriously take an hour or so long nap at any time. I'm just feeling so very tired. Growing a baby is hard work! :) Besides being tired, I definitely felt bloated especially after eating. I get hungry all the time, but can barely eat a big portion because I feel so full so fast!! Another lovely side affect of was getting breakouts seemingly everywhere. But hey, I am not one to complain, if that's the only symptoms I'm getting then I am happy to take it!

Week 9: At week 9 I had my 2nd Dr's appointment. I wasn't sure if we would be able to hear the heartbeat or not because usually you have to be 10 weeks along to hear it. My Dr said he has been able to hear it at 8 weeks and wanted to try. It took us a while but we did find it and it was strong and healthy. It was so amazingly wonderful getting to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time. I was so bummed that Scott wasn't able to make it to that appointment because I knew he would have loved being able to hear it. I could have sat there all day long listening to it!

So far this pregnancy has been an absolute blessing!! I couldn't have asked for things to go any better than they have been going. It has been so easy that sometimes I forget I am actually pregnant. I will be doing weekly updates from here on out probably on Wednesdays since that's when my weeks change over. I can't wait to share all the fun progress we are making with this little one!!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Our journey to parenthood hasn’t been quite how I imagined it would be when we first started talking about kids. For me, I knew that in life one of the biggest goals I could ever achieve would be to become a parent. I have always dreamed of being a Mommy and having little ones of my own. Ever since I was a little girl and would play with my dolls I dreamed of the day that I would meet my handsome husband and have babies of our own. When I met Scott and after a while knew he was “the one” this dream solidified in a way that it never had before. I started to dream about what our babies would look like, when we would have kids, and what type of parents we would be. It was always in the back of my head since the day we said our “I Do’s”. We had discussed waiting at least 2 years before starting to try for a family, and although I loved newlywed life I still couldn’t wait for the day that we would be pregnant.

Last March, we officially made the decision to start trying for a family. I have never been more excited and nervous about anything in my life. We decided to not really make too much of an effort the first couple months since it can take a while for your body to adjust to being off birth control, but I secretly hoped that it would happen. After the first couple months went by then we really started trying, and trying, and trying but it just wasn’t happening. I always thought that getting pregnant was just a simple task, I mean how many people accidentally get pregnant all the time, and how many people do hear about who try and the first time it just happens like magic. I wanted to be one of those people so badly, but it just wasn’t panning out that way for us. Every month would pass and there would be no baby news and each time my heart broke just a little bit more. I never expected that trying for a baby would be as emotionally challenging as it was. It would seem like every time I would log on to Facebook or Twitter yet another of my friends would be sharing their joyous news of being pregnant, and while I was truly thrilled for them in the back of my mind I always wondered why it wasn't my turn yet.

Around October of last year, after a few months of trying Scott and I decided that we were really not in a healthy place physically and decided to take a break from putting a solid effort into trying for a baby, and replace the focus on us getting healthy. We both knew we were not where we should be and we didn't want to start our new life as a family being overweight and unhappy about ourselves. Especially for me, I realized that I really didn't want to get pregnant being where I was. It just wouldn't be healthy for anyone involved, so we decided to take a break from it all and focus our attention on that. We both had GREAT success and lost roughly 50 pounds each.

Even though during this time our focus wasn't really on babies, I couldn't get it out of mind. I hoped that it would somehow just happen, but it still wasn't the case. During this time, I started noticing that my cycles weren't really as normal as they should be. Actually, they weren't normal at all. In high school and college, I kind of remember it being that way but at that point in my life why would I care? I never once thought of it as an issue. However, this isn't the best scenario for having a baby. Once I noticed this pattern it only added to my anxiety about babies. I began to think that this might really be a huge issue for us and maybe we wouldn't be able to get pregnant on our own. In my most challenging time in life, there were very few people that I could turn to on this. We hadn't really shared with anyone about trying for a family and only a few of my best girlfriends knew where we stood and what challenges we were facing. I just wasn't brave enough to be totally open with everyone about this challenge, and so I mostly kept it to myself which was probably the most difficult thing to do.

Thankfully, God is always bigger than our challenges and only He would be able to reach my heart and change this struggle into something wonderful that would deepen our relationship. I began reading the book, Supernatural Childbirth, and it completely opened my eyes to what the word God has to say about having children. The word of God will ALWAYS change your situation, but you have to know what it says in order for that to happen. My faith was so broken in the area of having children because of what I kept seeing in the natural and what you hear in the world about people struggling to have children, but did you know that God never intends for us to struggle in ANY area of life, but especially in this area? Once I began to really get in my heart what the word has to say about God's provision for children, this gloominess and sadness that held me broken for so long began to break in my life. Praise God for His word! I no longer began to wonder "what if" but I knew it was only a matter of WHEN it would be His perfect timing. It's amazing how when you completely let go of something and trust it in God's hands that shortly after everything falls into place.

Early this summer I had finished a round of my diet, and was taking a break before starting up again. Scott and I kept joking that I wouldn't be able to do another round because I was gonna get pregnant on my break. I honestly wasn't expecting it and we really weren't trying at all, but we just kept joking that it was going to happen. I had been tracking my BBT temps trying to get an idea of my cycle pattern, and knew roughly when I had ovulated. I started to notice that my temps were staying a bit higher than normal, but I really didn't want to read too much into it because I tend to over hype things in my head and I really didn't think I was pregnant. However, I did have a few things that seems a bit abnormal for me, and I began to wonder if something might be happening. I figured that I ovulated around the middle of June and knew that roughly 2 weeks later I should be starting up the monthly fun that every woman looks forward to, but my temps were still high and I had been having stomach cramps which never ever happens to me. However I still wrote it off as nothing, and didn't think twice about it.

On Friday, June 24th very early in the morning I woke up and decided to take a pregnancy test for the heck of it, again not thinking that it would say anything but not pregnant. At 5 in the morning as I sat in the bathroom with heavy, sleepy eyes I waited incoherently as the test blinked, and blinked, and blinked, and finally my little eyes beheld the following....

I had to rub my eyes and blink a few times to make sure that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. After about 30 seconds it all hit me and I couldn't stop shaking with happiness, shock, and excitement. I knew the minute that I saw those words on that test that I couldn't wait another second to tell Scott. I ran straight into the bedroom, shook him gently, and said "Honey, wake up I have something to tell you." I handed him the test and waited for a reaction and heard the words I had always dreamed of hearing, "Huh, I have no idea what I am looking at???" Okay, so that wasn't exactly how I pictured the moment, but give a guy a break it was 5 in the morning! I filled in the pieces and said, "WE ARE GONNA HAVE A BABY!" At that moment, happy tears filled my eyes and we hugged each other, it was finally happening for us! We had our baby!

Even though the journey to parenthood was filled with a lot more bumps than I ever thought we would have had, I am so thankful that it all worked out in God's perfect timing. Any challenge you face in life will only make you stronger if you choose to look at it in that light. With God by my side I am confident that we will ALWAYS come out the other side of a challenge with a positive resolution, and He has never let me down nor will He ever. Whenever I had my doubts about this becoming a reality for us, I loved standing on this verse.

1 Samuel 1:27

"For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition which I asked of Him."

This child has been covered in prayer and dreamed about for so long before it was a reality. They were something that I petitioned the Lord for, and I knew that if He did it in the Bible then that surely He would answer my prayer today, and He certainly has. This little baby is a joyous answer to all our prayers, and I cannot wait for them to arrive and tell them all about it!

I hope that you will follow along with us over the upcoming months as we start on this great adventure towards becoming parents. I cannot wait to continue to share my heart and life with you as we wait for our little blessing to arrive in February!